If you live in a hostel on the campus of a Federal University in Nigeria, there are certain personality traits you MUST leave the place with: Patience. A high tolerance threshold. Being your brother’s keeper. Ability to share.

If you come in with the mindset that everything should be done speedily, living on campus will teach you how to apply the brakes. During exam periods, you will learn the art of being patient. If you have to queue to wait for the campus shuttle and the buses are not coming as scheduled (No, there’s no actual schedule but let’s just keep it flowing) you will WAIT. There are no alternatives. (Unless you want to walk and get to your lecture theatre sweating profusely) Patience.

We got to Law School, Bwari and opened the taps…water flowed. Ah! It felt like we had been tossed into the Paradise scene from the thick bound, yellow ‘My Book of Bible Stories’. While foreign students turned their noses up at the living quarters, we were in awe.Those of us coming from Moremi, Fagunwa, Amina Halls knew that running tap water was something we heard about. Back then, in Unilag, if you were in school on Saturday you’d probably catch a glimpse of this flowing water Unicorn. The only other place you’d find running water is…Oh wait does fetching water from the tanks outside the halls count?
Anyway, in light of that situation learn to be your brother’s keeper. Everybody NEEDS water. You don’t believe me? Ask Fela! He said it. Water no get enemy.. You will need someone to help you ensure you have water in your buckets. (Yes, you should have like 3. It’s the hostel way. Deal with it). The thing about helping with water is that it is a STRICTLY reciprocal effect. Just like ‘keeping seat’, the only way you can be sure of someone helping you out with water (or a seat in class) is if you’re known to help normally. You HAVE to be your brother’s keeper so you don’t get caught in a bind on the day diarrhoea decides to visit as a result of having dodgy Indomie noodles in a dingy shop. Brother’s Keeper.

Okay, so by now you can tell that the hostels are densely populated and the ‘inmates’ are dirty. Your tolerance threshold for the irritating and the downright disgusting will increase. After a few weeks in the hostel you stop seeing the urine filled bath stalls as a barrier to your taking a shower. You find a vacant spot on the sink slab, hoist up your bucket and wrap your towel around your head (shower cap and towel rack in one – did I mention that you become innovative?). How can you live in that environment and not be tolerant? Your roommate doesn’t care that you hate the smell of locust beans, she is just cooking away, humming to music from the speakers of her battery-operated rechargeable lamp. As the weeks roll on in the semester, you don’t realise when the tune of ‘Akanchawa’ inadvertedly drops out of your mouth. Tolerance.

The university doesn’t have facilities to accommodate all the students. That’s fine. However, these bed spaces turn up on the black market at ridiculous rates. Thus, if you’re unable to ‘pay for space’, you find someone to squat with. This is where you learn the esteemed virtue of sharing. One narrow single bed. A 5ft square ‘lot’. Insert one fridge, one television one standing suitcase, a dangling curtain. Ah! Doesn’t sound like much eh? This is a fancy ‘corner’, people! Two adults? Yes, you learn to share. Sharing is a virtue.
You’re hurrying back from class, starving but you have your packed rice from Jesus Embassy. You get to your room and someone has ‘borrowed’ your hot plate. Okay, all is not lost, your roommate has one you can use. You don’t mind sharing electrical appliances, but you draw the line at crockery. Alas, someone has burnt your pot in the process of warming Beans. Okay, where’s your plate. Look, your roomie is using it to entertain her guests.

Yes, you will learn the share.

My friend told me of how in their room (BoysQuarters in Ozolua) 5 boys shared 2 pairs of jeans for the entire academic year. He tried to explain the logistics of it to me… *Brain Freeze*. Sharing… is… Caring? Sorta?

Every time I start complaining about how the Nigerian system doesn’t work, I am reminded of all the positive character traits that I have taken away from having to live that way. My response remains, is it absolutely impossible to have these traits and still have my basic social & physiological needs met? Isoken constantly reminds me that I am a product of that system about which I complain. “It doesn’t work perfectly, but it works”. The truth is, it doesn’t work. We tell ourselves that it is ‘okay’ because we find ourselves in a quagmire – an unchanging system. Secondly, it’s easier to look at the ‘positives’ than to take that deep introspective look. We are afraid of what we will find if we look too deeply. So, we laugh and we find a way to use cardboards to replace broken louver blades. We tell ourselves that contributing to buy the public address system for the lecturer is ‘team building’. We tell ourselves that absence of a functioning public transportation system is a good motivation for working hard to buy our own cars. We can’t really help it… or can we?

We laugh because, after all, na condition make crayfish bend! Let’s just stay positive and not keep thinking about the bad. But for how long?

Have a great week ahead. Be the change in your own little corner. Question norms, think independently and don’t be afraid to swim against the tide.

About Atoke

Atoke was trained as a lawyer in Nigeria and practiced for almost 4 years before she decided sitting in traffic from Oshodi to Lekki every day was killing her slowly. She now works full time as a writer and an editor at BellaNaija.
With a Masters degree in Creative Writing from Swansea University, Atoke hopes to be known as more than just a retired foodie and a FitFam adherent. She can be reached for speechwriting, copywriting, letter writing, script writing, ghost writing and book reviews by email – atokeofficial@gmail.com. She tweets with the handle @atoke_ | Check out her Instagram page @atoke_ and visit her website atoke.com for more information.

Nice article. You made me remember my Uni days. I remember those days when school boyfriend comes and a babe is with an “oppressor”, we skillfully discharge school boy. We had each other’s back. Uni days were fun. I learnt from my Uni days the virtue of being trustworthy and reliable. I also learnt to be patient. Without Patience, you couldn’t tolerate Dorothy who converted our little corner to a shoe mart, a boutique and a restaurant all at a time. The only difference was that she rendered services to herself only.

chei! Atokeeeeee u have taken me waaayyyy back today o!
grabbing all the empty buckets in the room of fetch water on the special occasions that it runs in new hall, coming back to your room starving only to find out that your only piece of cutlery left has developed legs while your roomies form deaf and dumb, chei those were the days.

Had a room mate who had a squatter and 2 floaters as if that was not enough she had an ever flowing stream of brothers and sisters in the Lord and they would start fellowship without even informing her other room mates, wetin eye no go see.
I guess it was just a way of learning to adapt to different conditions life throws at you.

Back to the topic, although I do wish things could be different / life more comfortable, however in retrospect I have realized that life in Nigeria toughens you up. If you can survive there, you are survive almost anywhere else.

Atoke pls can u do sthg abt this no water thg at unilag. I know other schools have the same problem but u know if u champion the cause ffor unilag maybe some of us will follow u. Even if its to dig a couple boreholes. Not even asking for running water..just easy access to water to fetch. Pls biko

Remember how i so loved pancake in school, rushed to the hostel room room to prepare pancake for my hungry self, and i will make extra but all my roomies want a share. i will only test a less than half that will leave me more hungry than i was.
Remember weekend (sunday) or public holiday when cleaners dont come to work the toilet is a hell to behold. I will smartly go to library to answer the call of nature.
Will never forget the squaters and floaters, a room with 5 bunk beds (officially for 10), but we were almost 24 in a room, Cheeiii !
Never forget a deeper life roomie Sister Nike (her life is trully deep) who was squating sis mary (pushed my corner mate for standing close to her bed) ????. I wondered what will happen if she is the ownwer of the space. . . . . . .. . . . . . . .

You need to see my face when I read the “5 boys shared 2 pairs of jeans -Whole year” OMG!!! glad my co-workers are yet to arrive. As in for real??? On another note and I do apologize in advance Atoke for putting this up here but for the first time in my life I experienced domestic violence and a little shaken by it. So we (my hubby and I) live on the 3rd floor of our apartment building. Needless, to say we live in a very good neighborhood and not to diss any race but there are not many people of color in the area as whole and not in the apartment complex but this “couple” of African-American decent moved in recently with a daughter this girl should be 14yrs at most. They live on the ground floor. I was walking downstairs on my way to work when I heard people arguing, my naija sef slowed down. I am not about to get shot but I heard a man say ” So you gonna pull a knife on me? you know I slowed down some more. Well, pretty much this little girl had pulled a knife on the guy because he was hitting her mum and to defend her mum she pulled a knife on the guy .Now I don’t know if this guy is her father but he told her cursing her out with the F-word over and over again to have pulled her knife on her mother that he hit the woman for a reason. This guy walks off, I think he is leaving but I leave enough space between this guy and me. I walk to my car but I see this guy coming back going towards the house (you know he is not going back there for laughs and giggles). I am trying to report this anonymously but what gets me his my husband’s reaction. He believes I am taking it too seriously by reporting “something that is not by business”: I don’t care that it is not my business it is obvious that this is not the first time this is happening and I don’t want to wait till someone gets killed before doing something. I know our 9ja mentality just wants to sit back and do nothing but I can’t. Many people die because neighbors have refused to do anything.

So I contacted the Domestic Violence line…men, this law business is a something else. So now pretty much all hands are tied. Since the victim(s) did not report it there is not much that can be done. Child protective services can be called in but that means the victim could lose custody of her own child. I was told going to the police should be the last resort for a couple reasons. First my safety, this was 6am in the morning and I was the only one that witnessed this and the abuser saw me and saw my car so he will know who reported it “anonymously” . Secondly, since the lady/ child are yet to report it, it might escalate the situation for both of them and push the woman into the arms of the dude some more. I am getting a headache just thinking about it.

Hahahaha!!! Atoke, ohhhhh. The setting for this scene can be no where else but in a typical Naija Uni hostel – “Your roommate doesn’t care that you hate the smell of locust beans, she is just cooking away, humming to music from the speakers of her battery-operated rechargeable lamp. As the weeks roll on in the semester, you don’t realise when the tune of ‘Akanchawa’ inadvertedly drops out of your mouth. Tolerance.”

This right here was my entire 1st year of Uni until I escaped by renting a BQ with my friends. God was faithful. How we been take manage, abeg? Bathrooms you can’t use, toilets that were worse, four people sharing a bunk bed built for just two single mattresses, no functioning kitchen so the corridor was the available space for food prep and cooking, the threat of all your “baffs” being “fapped” if you left them out to dry after washing so on a sunny Saturday you go just find chair to siddon and dey monitor your clothes until they finally got dried…. Abeg, how we take manage?? And in all of that chaotic living, all man still get to dey diligently chase their dream of a 4.0 gpa.

Naija really teaches you survival and tolerance in untold measures. I remember two different occasions at work here in the UK where we came into the office and discovered the power had gone out overnight (because of bad snow storms and wind). See panic among the directors as na winter time – na im dem come personally dey go round offices to ask everyone to please pack up and go home as the working conditions are unsafe. Kai, I laughed inwardly and said to myself that these oyibo people really look after themselves. If na Naija office ehn… in fact, no need to say more.

talking bout fapping clothes, I once lost a full travel bag of newly acquired baffs…. all bought by my mum after her holiday trip away….. semester resumed, I was changing cloth day to day, decided to go home for the weekend, and came back to meet not even the travel bag containing the clothes…. I weak!!!!

Nostalgia, I went to Osu while we didn’t have the school hostel experience, I remember picking up the akanchawa song from my neighbours, it was an everyday wakeup call. And there were many trial marriages, coupling up tins

E gba mi! What happened to “peace, love and cupcakes”? We already have to eat healthy in real life; why extend that to our virtual space? Cucumber slices? How long has this been going on? *exasperated*
Now to the topic…

“Atoke, please stop embarrassing our alma mater. All those things are part of life. That’s what teaches us to be stronger and less dependent on order. It’s because of those unfavourable circumstances and the attendant experiences that we are well rounded individuals today…We are fighters. We are survivors.”

LOL. I’m laughing out loud at how totally stupid that sounds but unfortunately, that’s the mental state of a lot of people and the exact reason why nothing changes for the better.

Hmmm Atoke, you just took me down memory lane. As an aje then who didn’t attend boarding school, uni hostel was a rude shock!!! I had to be treated for several toilet infections within my first few months, plus my digestive system rebelled against the toilet conditions so i was constantly constipated. My NIFES roomie would start morning evangelism and prayer by 4am complete with praise n worship, sharing the word, prophecies and offering sef. Then the other roomies who happened to be runs girls would come back from “work” and give a graphic description of their escapades. Or is it the acquired skill of bathing with half a bucket of water, tying the sponge around your torso so you can rinse your body and sponge at the same time, plus abandoned soaps on the bathroom floor. Kai we try sha!

Greatest of the greatest Akokites…oh lord…u bringing back memories…Atoke u forgot to mention ;wake up wake up’ from hostel fellowship as early as 5:30am wen sleep still dy sweet ur body,d gathering of students (onlookers) when girls are going clubbing..chai..i miss Unilag oo..dt water tin is constant, u forgot to mention spreading of wet clothes in the room for the fear of thieves, insults dose biobaku boiz wey go climb fence jst to see girls bathing dwnstairs in newest hall, it became a norm for us den oo, Sodeinde boiz for new hall nko…i ad fun while in sch sha…

Looooooooool. Atoke, don’t you just know how to make me smile every Monday morning????? I can totally relate to this. You went to NLS Bwari and you’re complaining. Picture the uncompleted building hostel block in Lagos NLS with 4 to one room, 8 to one toilet. Kai…I love my country all the same, lol.

@Howiizzit,NLS Lagos was something else particularly that uncompleted building hostel.Serious suffer head things. . The DDG was always lying to us how water would flow by the time we come back from attachment. Was it even fetching water and carrying it up those steep stairs? Or paying 245 thousand naira with no reading table and chair provided in your room? Jeeez! Or Absu with 4 bunks, 16 in a room, no toilet and bathing outside in the frigid cold? Tufiakwa, God must judge our leaders.

Please tell her abeg. That Lagos campus is the sh*t….literally. We had students knocking on our doors to take their baths. Guys and girls living under the staircase for weeks… ‘hard life’ doesn’t even begin to describe some of the things we stomach and accept in our educational system.

Moremi was my hostel and i will never forget it! My hotplate went missing in my 2nd week after moving in and i was basically had to switch to my trusty kerosene stove which guarded jealously too. Would lock it in my little cupboard which i got as a landlord. Another roomate liked to cook palm oil stew and the room would often reek of palmoil for the entire day.
What abt our room? It was actually a dining hall that had been converted to hold 12 double bunk beds. By the end of the academic year, there were nearly 30 of us staying there! Both the original landlords plus the squatters and perchers as we called them back then.
So many mems.
Aluta continua!
From a former Moremite.

I have a question. .do you just accept the squatters or perches. How does it work? ..do they tell you hey am staying with you from now on. I salute any Nigerian who schooled in Nigeria, I don’t have patience and I can’t stand thieves or borrow borrow people. Seriously two pair of jeans being abused by five male genitals and u know they did not wash it til weekend . Smh.

u accept them o. cause you know one time you might a squater. they give the rooms yearly so that you have today doesn’t mean you will have tomorrow. when lectures have started and the girl has no where to go, you don’t even consider saying no. only thing you might say is why not try so and so, if they say no, you can come back. if someone wants to squat her sister like i did, no way you can say no to that one. but some wicked people can sha

i had squatters till year 4, that year 4 ehen, i was so detemined not to squat anyone oo, in yr 2 i was squatting 3pple so tey i usually go to another room to sleep and no b say i dy collect money from them oo…haaaaa..i cant forget unidays

Hmmm… I remember the toilets mehn! I never got close enough to the ‘door less’ doorways .We just used the toilets to empty our “shyting buckets’. I mastered the art of standing 3ft away, aiming-tossing and emptying the buckets into the toilet.. I never risked going to the bathroom with my towel cos I didn’t want to chance It falling off my head or d rail. Hostel made me lose all form of self consciousness cos, we walked to & fro bathrooms totally nude. U can imagine u having ur bath and like 10 pairs of eyes on u, as well as discussing why miss so & so had inverted nipples and why babe so&so’s boobs were pointing south cos of the politicians’ old blood she was filled with. It was in the hostel I learnt how malicious girls could be. eg: I never used to save my boyfriend’s number in my phone for the fear of a roomie stealing the number off my phone. You had to carefully hide ur makeup and valuables or carry them about cos the person that borrowed them from you could come back and steal them later. then we had the holier than thous who would turn their nose up at you having boyfriends but would be the first to dig out their spoons when your ‘maga’ landed with fried rice aand ice cream…… then the ever annoying squatters that could afford to buy the latest trendy clothes and shoes but would never bring out money to pay for bed space.

Atoke! Oh my God!!! You’re making me tear up here. I soooooo miss Unilag and its craziness. The one hostel I absolutely hated was Amina Hall. Monkeys used come into the room to steal food and girls would run away screaming, the hallways were always filled with water… Naaah! Amina Hall was a weist.
Clothes and cutlery going missing like no mans business.
The fights were epic.
Risky Burger flowed.
I hated some lecturers, loved some, and thankfully never met the ‘sex for grades’ ones.
But I miss my school sha.
I miss the ability to walk on the streets of Unilag till 11pm without fear of cultists or anything.
I miss chapel.
I miss RCF.
I miss SUB food.
I miss my friends.
I miss UNILAG.
Thanks for this piece.

Chai! Unilag. I remember the Amina monkeys. those in MTH would have seen monkeys once in a while too. my constant loves were the crabs. they were just everywhere you go. I finished in 2011 and towards the end of my stay, the water thing got better. at least in Moremi and Newest hall. there were speculated periods in the day when water would run, you either arrange to be there to fill your bucketsss or get a roomie to help you. u also needed a bucket that could go deep under your bed so that when the roomieswho cannot be bothered to fetch try to steal your water, someone will definitely catch them.

I cant forget my first two years in newest hall tho, the early search for water at Biobaku reservoirs and those randy boys screaming ‘no bobby, no water’. I usually ended up filling my bucket by begging for one bailer of water from like 15 people.

And risky, oh my God, risky burger. i ate it so much we did a risky competition. and i still stand by my conclusion that Elkanemi risky is the best. I never lived in new hall sha, but visiting my friends convinced me that new hall was the zanga.

And those escapade stories from the nights with the alhajis, they were interesting and annoying at the same time, wake up, beautiful sisters, wake up, its time for morning devotion. Unilag. Choi!

For those of you who think Unilag is hustle, you should stay a semester in UNN. i got the shock of my life when I realized it was perfectly normal for the school to allocate five people to a four man room. too bad for the fresher, she can sleep in class. that is when it started occurring to me that I wouldn’t last in the school.

Shallat to the wonderful memories and people I met in both schools under those crazy conditions tho, amazing friends for life.

Ok… I schooled in the UK and had similar experiences. I stayed in a catered hall in my first year and my God! People were so rank! The toilet and bathrooms always smelled of vomit during the weekends. Oyinbos and binge drinking o. It wasn’t uncommon to see someone passed out on the hallway. One time someone stole my bowl of chicken from the fridge. Just carried the whole thing. Food always got stolen – milk, juice and the likes. But this person carried my well fried stewed chicken! Bowl included. The bathrooms and toilets were always a mess during the weekends. And people would carry mugs and plates from the dining hall into the toilets. To do what abeg?! I always used to make sure I was the first to take a shower everyone. I didn’t understand how they used the bathroom and walked out without flushing. And leaving dirty plates in the sink? Or microwaving something that explodes and not bothering to clean it up? So thing will stay in the microwave so tey it will become a new coat. Our cleaner constantly left notices for people to tidy up and then she resorted to throwing people’s plates and cutlery away. Being dirty isn’t just a Nigerian thing o. I think undergraduate university halls anywhere in the world would hold interesting stories.
Finally! The gbenshing sounds? Imagine being woken up to the marvelous sounds of someone’s erotic orgasm. Proper moaning and groaning and screaming and expletives all mixed together. And the stupid girls would be giving saucy details the next morning at breakfast.

Attending a naija uni is an experience, living in the hostels is a “total experience.” i stayed one semester and decided that it was not my portion to die early. i couldn’t understand how there could be toilets but cannot be used; i had to always buy a cake at a mr biggs restaurant just to use the toilet. how two people would fight and pour water on my bed or how a room mate apportioned her boyfriend the landlord of our room so that he would come in at 2am or how we went on exile from our room because of cult guys issue wey no concern me but my room mate, just to avoid being hit by ‘stray bullet’. i couldn’t understand it all. And dem say if you no go, you miss

Aww, nice write up. Took me back to my OAU days, such memories. I wouldn’t trade those years for anything. Now I am wondering how we all survived and still came out tops.
Thank God for the grace to bear all things.

After attending a federal boarding school, where we had rules, had time for clean ups etc yet the place will still be messy, I was determined not to try that in uni. So when my dad told me to try and get accommodation in school hostel at UNIZIK. I obliged, quietly went for inspection, after my inspection, I told my dad that the school authorities said they had no space for me, that I should try next year. That was how i stayed off camp till i left school. Loool! Nnaa men I couldn’t deal at all

Jeez, I can so relate to dis. Remenbr mi 1st mornin in fagunwa hostel, was having ma bath in an open space in d hostel (every gal does dt, it way beta dn d bathrooms). I froze wen a male cleaner passed by mi and was cleanin d surroundings, every oda person kept havin deir baths like he didn’t exist, was told it a norm in fagunwa. I plus over 500 hundred gals got used to gettin naked in front of d cleaner. Survival.
Mehn, I miss hostel life whre u av evritn at ur doorstep (outsiders come in and advertise deir goods and products at d top of deir voice), early mornin hot doughnut, sexy makeup, fried meat, jewellers, inner wears, clothes and all. ‘Any work’ and ‘any wash’ wre also dre to help u out wiv all ur chores in exchange for moni. Guys would rather stand on their corridors and beside windows in d hostels rather dan take a nap jess to make fun of gals passin by.

OMG! i have been laughing out my heart and soul here and my oyinbo colleague is just wondering what is wrong with me that he had to come to my screen to have a look of what got me so excited to the extent i had tears running down my face. Oh my great and absolutely amazing unilag days 99/2004, i would never trade the experience of my undergrad days for the top 10 universities in the Uk…i am fine with the UK post grad experience which is totally different. I miss moremi hostel life as that was way better compared to my cramped room in newhall and fagunwa….i had the opportunity of A block which was a 4 man single bed room. Waking up early to have our bath outside around the hollywood block or watchout for cleaners to clean the bathrom so you can jump in before it gets messed up again…having anywork to go get our food and the usual bottle of coke to step down with. I also miss our hall week,mama anita’s fish & chips my airconditioned lecture room in masscomm while other students were sweating it out (lol)…..I LOVE UNILAG,couldnt have asked for more and hope the young ones are getting great experience from it too.